Parse CSV and format transactions

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Q: What difficulty level is this coding question?

This is a Medium difficulty Data Manipulation (SQL/Python) question, commonly asked during Technical Screen rounds at Kikoff.

Q: What role is this question designed for?

This question is commonly asked for Software Engineer candidates at Kikoff during technical interviews.

Question

Given a CSV file containing many transactional records with columns Merchant, Amount, Date (YYYY-MM-DD), and Status, write a script to parse the file and print, for each transaction, the following two-line block exactly in the given order:
---------------------------
|  {Merchant}               ${Amount with two decimals}  |
|  {Date}                   {Status}                     |
---------------------------
Example for one row:
---------------------------
|  Merchant                 $10.04                       |
|  2020-01-01               pending                      |
---------------------------
Requirements:
- Preserve the input row order.
- Format Amount as a dollar value with two decimals (e.g., $10.
04).
- Trim surrounding whitespace in fields before formatting.
- Output one block per transaction with the same delimiter lines and spacing pattern.

PracHub · Accepted Answer

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to parse and format structured transactional data, emphasizing CSV parsing, trimming whitespace, numeric formatting to two decimal places, and preserving input row order.

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